Callum’s musings on the world at large…
I’m back in Bangkok. Several people have said “You just can’t get enough of that place” or “You need your Bangkok fix every now and then hey”.
Bangkok is my home away from home. My base in Asia. I have friends here. Places I can stay. I know the city reasonably well. I can order food, get around, get online, etc. If I transit through Asia, I typically stop in Bangkok.
To keep the pics flowing, here’s the view from the 17th floor where I’m staying.
Ross and I set off in the eco camper van…
We left Sydney heading north. Our first night we pulled off the road onto a track through a forest and camped for the night.
Second day we made it to Nambucca Heads and awoke to this view.
As my two travelling companions are both non-drivers, it was agreed that I would drive and they would cook. So, inspired by this view, Ross whipped up a storm on the stove on our second morning.
We offered Fio a cup of tea, and in return she gave us the low down on the local area, and took this snap of us enjoying our first cooked meal on the trip.
On Tuesday (third day) we made it to Pottsville to visit Sharyn and Dennis. Sharyn is a long-standing friend of my mum’s. It was great to finally meet her after having met her kids and heard so much about her. When we arrived there was a freshly baked chicken pie in the kitchen of which we made short work! 
Here’s Sharyn on the phone in her kitchen.
After staying overnight at Sharyn’s (thanks again Sharyn) we drove to Brisbane to pick up our third hombre. On the way we met some tree girls. Good times.
Then we collected Ahmed from the airport.
After picking up Ahmed we were heading north to meet Fergus and Trijntje in Maleny. We got pretty close and pulled off the road to find somewhere to camp for the night. Eventually we pulled off the road and stopped. We were awoken to the sound of something banging against the van…
Once our bedmates were chased away, we realised we’d chosen a splendid spot to camp.
After a very late night and an equally late start, we made it to Maleny to stay with Fergus and Trijntje for a night. They live in a truly amazing house built from rammed earth. Here’s a shot from the gardens showing just how lush and tropical this part of the world is.
After two fantastic days with Fergus and Trijntje, we set off for a night out in Brisbane. We ran into one of our tree climbing friends again, and they invited us to stay at their place. In the morning we bore witness to the Australian man and his barbecue in action! Quite a feast it was. Thanks again Chris and Jasmine.
Then we cruised a little further down to the travellers mecca of Byron Bay. We proceeded to get outrageously stoned on our first night. Here’s some small token of our adventures.
Naturally, severe munchies ensued, and the chocolate cake was rapidly devoured.
After a couple of days of Byron Bay, we cruised on southwards in the direction of home. On the way we spotted a couple of signs for Fredo’s Pies. 50 varities of pies. We just couldn’t resist. Ahmed devoured the crocodile meat pie. He was fairly impressed. We had to snap a shot with Marilyn.
I bought a Huawei E220 last week. It took a week or so to arrive. Then I wanted to get myself a 3 mobile broadband account. That turned out to be a pain in the ass. You need to sign a contract, so you have to go through a credit check. As I don’t have any paperwork in Aus, Ross kindly agreed to sign the contract. Alas, having only been in the country a few months, he failed the credit check. After some initial skepticism, Toppo kindly agreed to sign on the dotted line. Bravo!
So, today, this post comes to you via mobile broadband.
There were some initial glitches though. It took some serious farting around. I tried installing vodafone’s linux software, that didn’t work. It could see the modem most of the time, but it wouldn’t connect. Not sure why, some weird wvdial errors. Yet wvdial on it’s own would work fine.
Then I tried umtsmon. It worked ok. But it’s an ugly little application and it wouldn’t disappear into my system tray. Plus, NetworkManager thought there was no connection, so all my programs thought they were offline. Pain in the ass.
Finally, I upgraded NetworkManager to 0.7. Then bingo, it works like a charm.
I want to keep an eye on bandwidth consumption, so I’m using the Net Monitor screenlet. It’s not quite perfect as it tracks usage by calendar month. But it’ll do as a start.
Top marks to Ubuntu. You plug in the modem and it “just works”. No farting around switching modes or any of that nonsense. In fact, if you know the init strings, you can just dial and go. Once NetworkManager 0.7 goes final and makes it into Ubuntu, mobile broadband will be a cinch.
Changes are afoot in UK banking. I just received an email from Smile telling me about faster payments.
Dear Callum
At smile we’re always looking at ways we can improve the service we offer you. This is why we’re pleased to tell you about Faster Payments. The Faster Payments Service will speed up the way you make and receive electronic payments. It means, in most cases, the beneficiary will receive the payment in two hours, instead of the usual three working days it takes currently.
In future you will be able to use the Faster Payments Service to make funds transfers, including, future dated transfers, bill payments and standing orders.
The service will be free - and you don’t need to do anything to benefit. All eligible payments will automatically go via the Faster Payments Service once it becomes available for your account.
The official industry launch happened at the end of May 2008. However the Faster Payments Service is one of the most complex services introduced in recent times and we want to make sure it’s fully functional before making it available to our customers. Along with many other banks we will be conducting a phased introduction over several months, so it may not be available until early next year.
Visit http://www.smile.co.uk/faster for more details.
Yours sincerely,
The smile team
The email was also followed with this rather nonsensical disclaimer:
This e-mail is intended solely for the addressee and is strictly confidential. If you are not the addressee, please do not read, print, re-transmit, store or act in reliance on it or any attachments. Instead please e-mail it back to the sender and delete the message from your computer.
As you’ll notice I chose to ignore that! 
Is there any reason why one should not use the username as the password salt? Storing md5( username . password ) instead of md5( password ) in the password column.
It seems like a very simple idea, so I’m sure there’s a good reason why it’s not in popular use. Hopefully somebody can tell me that reason!
In Fedora 8 when I closed my laptop lid, my screen would lock. Under Ubuntu 8.04 this doesn’t happen. After a bit of digging, I found a solution. The gconf setting is “/apps/gnome-power-manager/lock/blank_screen”. When set to true, closing the lid will lock the screen. Luvvvly.
I spent 4 long hours on public transport today. I was eager to collect my new Nokia N810 as soon as possible. I twittered some first impressions. It’s a lovely device. Very tactile. It feels very solid. I was initially skeptical about the keyboard, but once I booted the device and started using, it’s great. So far I’m very impressed.
Unfortunately, the 5 way navigator button is faulty. The left side of the button doesn’t work, and the right side is super sensetive. So I can scroll right but not left. Bummer. It’ll have to go back to Nokia to be fixed. So much for getting my new machine in a hurry! A good opportunity to practice patience. Plus, it gives me some time to experiment. Once it’s fixed I’ll wipe all the settings and start fresh.
For all you picture lovers, here’s a shot of Mahjong:
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